OnTAP Versions and Replication

[TMADOCTHOMAS]

Background: our primary production NetApp cluster is an AFF-A700, and we snapmirror content daily to an offsite FAS8060. Both are currently running OnTAP 9.7P15.

I am looking at potentially upgrading to 9.9.1P5, however I noticed that the 8060s are unable to upgrade beyond 9.8. Based on this, I would prefer to leave the 8060s on 9.7 as the 9.8 System Manager interface has numerous problems.

Main question: how will this affect replication? My understanding is that you can replicate between disparate OnTAP versions as long as the difference is no more than 2 versions. So if the 8060s stay on 9.7, can I upgrade to 9.9.1 and still replicate back to a 9.7 system? Does anyone know if the standards have changed? I wouldn't want to be "stuck" on 9.9.1 in production just because the DR system couldn't be upgraded further. Any thoughts would be helpful! Thanks.

[SpindleNinja · Accepted solution]

If you're running XDP you should be fine - https://docs.netapp.com/us-en/ontap/data-protection/compatible-ontap-versions-snapmirror-concept.html#snapmirror-dr-relationships 

If you're still DP you can convert to XDP. 

[TMADOCTHOMAS]

Thank you @SpindleNinja ! That was quick. Super-useful chart, I'd not seen that before. Looks like we could go to 9.10.1 and still replicate back to 9.7 which is great.

[mgmt-gateway]

If you are using SVM-DR in your environment, you can not resync data from 8060 to A700 since SVM replication does not support version flexible mirror,

[TMADOCTHOMAS]

Thanks @mgmt-gateway , good point for people who use SVM-DR.